Portland's new Web site should spark the area

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The site will also detail potential carbonh andenergy savings, as well as how much a consumefr could save using various tax credits and othere incentives. City officials say the tool, called the Oregonj Clean Energy Map, will boost the profiler of one ofthe state’s fastest growing industriee and promote Portland as a nationa l hotbed of solar energy activity. “Ths idea is to really get people excited about sola and show them that other people in the community are doin g it and that solar workasin Portland,” said Lee Rahr, solart program coordinator for the city’s Bureaiu of Planning and The project is the result of Portland’e designation as a Solar America a U.
S. Department of Energy program in which 25 citiexs receive a totalof $4.9 millioj in grants and technical assistancew to invest in solad technology. The city received a two-year $200,000 cash grant as part of the It also receivesabout $250,000 in technical assistance from the Department of Energy, which covered the estimateds $30,000 cost of the Oregon Clean Energy Map. Portland will become one of aboutr a dozen of the Soladr America cities to use the progran to deploy solar map Web sites in a projecf being led out of the Portland officeof , the global engineering firm headquartered near Denver that was foundedr in Corvallis.
The idea was spawned a few years ago afterf San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom launched a goal ofhavingb 10,000 San Francisco rooftope adorned with solar photovoltaic systems by 2010. San Franciscl then contracted with CH2M Hill to come up witha “The No. 1 thing they neededf to do is educatethe public,” said Steph Stoppenhagen, who is leadintg the solar mapping initiative out of CH2M Hill’s officesd near Portland State San Francisco’s solar map was launched two yearxs ago, with CH2M Hill retaining the licensing rights to the prograj so it could offer it to other Using Google Map satellite images, CH2M Hill’s system prompts userw to type in their address.
The map zoomsw in and highlights their A box will pop up detailin gthe roof’s square footage, its estimated photovoltaic potential, the amounf of electricity a solar electric systemn could produce, how much electricity woulds be saved per year, and how many pounds of carbob would be spared by employinbg a system. In a separate box, usersx can get price estimates for varying sizes of residentialo andcommercial systems.
The Web site will then calculate discounts from incentive and taxcredift programs, which in Orego can account for up to 80 percent of the cost of a CH2M Hill can add or subtract features if Salt Lake City, for example, is consideringy a feature that would allow users to judgd aesthetic appeal by dragging and dropping pictures of commonlt used solar panels onto the image of thei r roof. In Sacramento, the company worked with the electricx utility on a function that allowds users to see how much money they would have savede on previous electric bill s by using a solarphotovoltaic system.
Portland’d map, for now, will be a basix version, with dots showinf existing photovoltaic and solarr thermal installations while helping usera calculate the cost savings and benefits of installing solar onthei rooftop. It will also feature a thermometer denotinhgthe city’s progress in reaching its goal of hosting 5 megawattsa of installed solar energy systemsx by 2012. The city is now at 3.2 Unlike other cities, Portland opted not to call the sitea “Solar Map.
” Instead, it chose the name Oregon Clean Energy Map out of the hope that othe r municipal governments might want to work with the city on expandinvg the map’s territory, which now just covers Portland and Multnomab County.